Jennifer Baumgardner’s new book of essays and interviews, “F ’em! Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls,” connects generations of women thinking about women, from the suffragettes to women’s libbers, from riot grrrls to Lady Bloggers.

In this excerpt from “F ’em! Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls,” author Jennifer Baumgardner lays out a history of feminism in “waves”: from the rights of citizenship and equality to transgenderism, male feminists and sex work.

David Kennedy, author of “Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America,” spent more than 10 years in the worst corners of the worst cities in the country before going to Baltimore.

The recently published “Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays” collects seven works for the stage, all of them about war. Here are excerpts from two of those plays, “9 Circles” by Bill Cain and “American Tet” by Lydia Stryk. A review of the book will be published in this column Friday.

In this excerpt from his new book, “The Iran Agenda,” veteran independent journalist and Truthdig contributor Reese Erlich challenges the conventional wisdom on Iran’s nuclear ambitions as he investigates the drive for war.